Norwalk council helps Board of Ed in nearly completed budget

NORWALK — If public turnout at Common Council meetings is any indicator, the passionate battle over Norwalk school funding for the coming fiscal year is over.

More than 200 of people packed the council chambers in late February to protest elected officials’ decision to boost school spending by $5.5 million rather than the $9.9 million requested by the Board of Education.

Not a word was heard from the public Tuesday evening after the city agreed to add to the equation another $950,000, provided the school board empties $1.1 million from its insurances reserves.

“After many hours of discussion, hard work, crunching some numbers, I believe we’ve come up with a balance that serves both purposes,” Mayor Harry Rilling said. “It serves the Board of Education, giving them the money that they need. It also helps to keep taxes as low as we possibly can.”

Over the last four years, he continued, the city has boosted the school board budget’s portion of the city’s annual operating budget by $22 million.

On a 12-0 vote, with one abstention, the council on Tuesday evening amended upward by $950,000 the expenditures cap on the 2018-19 operating budget. The new cap of $337.1 million represents $354.1 million in total spending less nearly $17 million in state aid and other estimated intergovernmental revenues.

Of that larger budget, the school board would get nearly $190.5 million, or a $6.45 million increase over current approved spending of $184 million. That doesn’t include another $1.2 million, which the city plans to give the board to help it revamp special education.

“I’m taking comfort in knowing that the Norwalk Board of Education has received the largest budget increase last year and it looks to be the same case for this year,” said council President John Kydes, a District C Democrat. “There’s no doubting that we understand that the Board of Ed was underfunded in decades past and now we’re coming back to our schools in a major way.”

The school board’s strategic operating plan, he continued, will continue to improve Norwalk schools.

Councilman Travis Simms, a District B Democrat, abstained from the vote.

Councilman Douglas Hempstead, a District D Republican, prefaced his comments by saying he had planned to vote against adding $950,000 to the budget cap.

“I am struggling with this because we already have a 3.7 percent potential tax increase,” Hempstead said. “And I know this is not going to add to it, but I worry about the following fiscal year, the ’18-19 budget.”

He asked for assurances the school board will transfer the roughly $1.1 million remaining in its insurance fund, and the city won’t be left on the hook if state aid to Norwalk schools falls short.

Rilling said he has school officials’ word the insurance money would be transferred. City officials maintain the remaining reserves are no longer needed after the city and school district moved to the state’s Partnership 2.0 insurance plan.

Any request by the school board to the city to make up for less-than-anticipated state aid would go before the Board of Estimate and Taxation, according to Norwalk Director of Finance Robert Barron.

“They can’t automatically get it,” Barron said.

‘Take down the lies’

While Tuesday’s action defused the fight over education spending for the fiscal year starting July 1, earlier actions by school officials left a bitter taste for some council members. Hempstead blasted a sign placed by school officials outside the elevator of the third floor of City Hall. The signs said Norwalk spends less per pupil than neighboring school districts. Hempstead described the sign as inflammatory and inaccurate.

“It’s time they take down the lies, the sign,” Hempstead said. “Get on the program; we’re all one city. We didn’t cut their budget. We lessened the amount they requested.”

Councilman Michael Corsello, an at-large Democrat, described the sign as “misleading” given Norwalk’s median income is less that those of surrounding towns.

The nearly completed 2018-19 operating budget includes several drawdowns from the city’s rainy day fund: $2 million to blunt the mill rate increase for taxpayers, $950,000 to help the school board implement its strategic operating plan and $1.2 million to help fund the final year of a plan to overhaul special education.

Councilman Greg Burnett, an at-large Democrat who formerly sat on the school board and chaired the Board of Estimate and Taxation, asked Barron where the rainy day fund will stand after the three drawndowns.

According to Barron, the fund will stand at 11.9 percent of annual city revenues as compared to 13.6 percent at the close of the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017.

The Board of Estimate and Taxation has until May 7 to adopt Norwalk’s 2018-19 operating budget and set property tax rates. Earlier Tuesday evening, the tax board voted unanimously to request council approval to boost the budget cap by $950,000.

“We’re all on the same page,” tax board Chairman Edwin Camacho said after the council agreed. “We’re all trying to achieve the same result. We approached it from different perspectives, and at the end of the day, we wanted to make sure that the Board of Ed had the funding that it said it needed.”